India’s University Grants Commission (UGC) has established the regulatory architecture to enable 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as World Class Teaching and Research Institutions named as ‘Institutions of Eminence’ (IoEs).

According to India government sources, an Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) has been constituted to select 10 Private and 10 Public Institutions of Eminence (IoEs) from the 114 applications which have been received by the Human Resource Development Ministry for the status of IoEs. No timeline has been prescribed in the Regulations for selection of IoE. The composition of the expert committee is as under:

The selected IoEs will have freedom to fix and charge fee from foreign students without restriction and would have the freedom to determine the domestic students fees, subject to the condition that no student who gains admission should be turned away for lack of finance.

The IoEs shall have flexibility of course structure in terms of credit hours and number of years to take a degree, after the approval of its Governing council and subject to broadly conforming the minimum prevailing standards.

The IoEs will have freedom to enter into academic collaboration with top 500 Global ranking institutions without approval of the Government or UGC except with institutions from negative list of countries determined by the Ministry of External Affairs or by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Under Public Sector, 10 Central Universities, 25 State Universities, 6 Deemed to be Universities, 20 Institutions of National Importance and 6 Standalone Institutions have applied. Under Private Sector, 9 Private Universities and 16 Deemed to be Universities have applied.

Among those who have applied from the public sector are seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Madras, Delhi, Bombay, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Guwahati, Roorkee), Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jadhavpur University, Goa University and Mangalore University.

Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and Indian Institute of Science Bangalore have also joined the race along with the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

The Central University of Hyderabad, Aligarh Muslim University, Banaras Hindu University, Madras University, Pondicherry University, and Mysore University have also applied.

From the private sector, the O P Jindal Global University, Ashoka University, Manipal University and Amity University, among others, have applied for the tag.